DR Wafik Moustafa is an example of a class of Britons who deserve more praise than they get: immigrants who integrate into British society, work hard and pay their taxes.

Arriving from Egypt to work as a GP in the early Seventies he began to take an interest in local politics, joining the Conservative Party in the late Eighties.

Keen to help aspirant politicians he allowed two of them to stay in spare bedrooms at his large house in Acton, West London.

Unfortunately that is where he encountered a class of modern Briton rather less worthy of praise: slippery, professional politicians who simultaneously use the public as a springboard for their personal ambitions and as a paymaster for their high-flying lifestyles.

Baroness Sayeeda Warsi seemed to have it made: she was plucked by David Cameron from life as a provincial solicitor and elevated directly to the House of Lords as the country’s youngest peer and thence into the Cabinet as Britain’s first female Muslim Cabinet minister, as well as co-party chairman.

She became a darling of BBC producers, was regularly invited on to Question Time and the Today programme to pass judgment on every subject under the sun.

She should have been able to look forward to a long career on the front bench, possibly reaching one of the great offices of state.

Instead she now faces political oblivion and all thanks to the same vice which has prematurely ended so many other political careers in recent years: creative expenses claims. Baroness Warsi must of course be allowed to defend herself before a parliamentary inquiry and possibly a police investigation too.

But her decision to claim £165.50 in overnight allowance while staying at Dr Moustafa’s house will take some explaining.

Dr Moustafa has said that he did not charge the Baroness any rent and that she made no contribution to council tax or utilities bills either.

Baroness Warsi insists she paid rent to Naweed Khan, who was also resident at Dr Moustafa’s house. But he too was a house guest living rent-free so why should she be paying him any rent?

It has been the same throughout the expenses scandal: the attempts by MPs and lords to justify their behaviour have been as breathtaking as the claims themselves.

Still Lord Hanningfield, who was jailed for claiming overnight allowances when in fact he was being chauffeured back to his Essex home, seems to think what he did was OK because lots of other lords were doing the same.

“I just unfortunately picked the short straw,” he told reporters at the weekend. The brazen attitude of the political classes is astounding.

Even when they are properly claimed, MPs’ expenses and allowances are excessive. Here we are in the deepest recession in living memory, with millions struggling to make ends meet and to hang on to employment, and yet our politicians seem so remote from the concerns of ordinary people they think nothing of continuing to help themselves to generous expenses and allowances which bear no relation to actual living and travel costs.

Admittedly London hotels do not have a reputation for being cheap but £165.50 is still more than enough for a standard single room at the Hilton Hyde Park, where prices start at £130.

Surely it isn’t too much to expect members of the House of Lords to exercise the same economic restraints which millions of households and businesses have had to impose upon themselves during the recession.

Even after the expenses scandal Baroness Warsi continued to show a cavalier attitude to the rules, failing to declare rental income from a flat which she owns in Wembley.

She claims it was an oversight but ought not a Cabinet minister take a little more care over the register of members’ interests, especially given recent lobbying scandals?

The story of Baroness Warsi speaks not just of the greed of the modern political classes, it serves also as a rather depressing commentary on David Cameron’s leadership.

The Baroness had done virtually nothing in life to suggest she deserved ennoblement as our youngest peer.

In the 2005 general election she fought – and lost – the nohope seat of Dewsbury, held by Labour’s Shahid Malik.

The then Tory leader Michael Howard appointed her as an adviser. She might have expected to be rewarded with a winnable seat in 2010 from which she would have had the opportunity to establish herself as a backbencher.

Instead in 2007 David Cameron catapulted her straight into the House of Lords and the Shadow Cabinet as “spokesman for community cohesion and social action”. It was Cameron at his worst. The title she was given was PR gobbledegook: what exactly is “social action” supposed to be?

Cameron is said to have been impressed by her speeches but it is hard to escape the conclusion that Baroness Warsi’s appointment was all about image.

She was stuffed in the Shadow Cabinet because the Conservative leader felt that the presence of a Muslim woman would help “detoxify” the Tory brand and take attention from the white, public school-educated men in his Shadow Cabinet.

How much better it would have been if Baroness Warsi had been forced to win a Commons seat. Perhaps then she would have experienced public anger towards the political classes which followed the 2009 general election and would not have become so remote from the concerns of ordinary people.

A career which seems to have been created as a public relations wheeze looks like ending as a PR disaster.